Universal Paperclips main.js

Cite as: Universal Paperclips main.js
Original: https://decisionproblem.com/paperclips/main.js
sha256: ee599076de868869e533490505189ddcb72dcc8748909ceeebe11e789f1b3a0a
Version: the version captured 2020-11-12 through 2022-01-05
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20220105125707/https://decisionproblem.com/paperclips/main.js
Accessed: 2026-10-21
Licence: none stated
Credit: Frank Lantz; the game's closing credits (main.js L4533-L4538) read “a game by Frank Lantz” and “combat programming by Bennett Foddy”. Capture by the Internet Archive.
Notes: The game's main script, 6,499 lines, unminified; locators are lines in this exact file. The Wayback Machine holds three distinct versions of the file: two from October 2017, the week the game launched, and this one, first captured 12 November 2020 and unchanged through the latest capture.

Cited on

Claims (8)

The game's closing credits read “a game by Frank Lantz” and “combat programming by Bennett Foddy”.	`main.js L4532–4539main.js L4532–4539`	Code
The first AutoClipper costs $5; with $n$ owned, the next costs ${1.1}^{n} + 5$ dollars. The flat 5 is most of the price until the 18th, when ${1.1}^{17}$ passes 5.	`main.js L2364–2374`	Code
The first MegaClipper costs $500; with $n$ owned, the next costs $1,000 \times {1.07}^{n}$ dollars, so the second costs $1,070.	`main.js L2377–2387`	Code
Marketing starts at $100 and doubles with each level bought.	`main.js L3062–3072`	Code
Clip factories start at 10⁸ clips, and each one built multiplies the next price by a factor that falls: ×10, ×9, … ×4 for the 1st–7th, ×2 for the 8th–12th, ×1.5 for the 13th–19th, ×1.25 for the 20th–38th, ×1.15 for the 39th–78th, and ×1.1 after.	`main.js L2419–2456main.js L2419–2456`	Code
Harvester and Wire Drones are priced by a power of the count, not a ratio: with $n$ owned, the next costs $10^{6} {(n + 1)}^{2.25}$ clips.	`main.js L2460–2468main.js L2491`	Code
The drone panel prices 10, 100, and 1,000 drones as the exact sum of their single prices, and a purchase pays each drone's price in turn.	`main.js L2516–2530main.js L2460–2468`	Code
After accepting the offer to start over in a new universe (project 147, Accept), the player can restart in “The Universe Next Door” for 300,000 operations or “The Universe Within” for 300,000 creativity; each restart adds 10% to demand or to creativity speed, and the counts survive the reset.	`main.js L4313–4315main.js L3266–3273main.js L6484–6499`	Code